The “Bitter” End

A Nap...Or Something Seems Necessary Here. For Her. For All Of Us.


It was almost a month ago when the lower right side of my jaw turned against me and played LAPD on my nerve endings. It was during the height of what was deemed “Bittergate”, in which Senator Barack Obama while at a San Francisco fundraiser sparked a national “conversation” with these now infamous words:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. ... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or anti-pathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

I was in the midst of writing a post on the whole brouhaha when the tooth fairy got ahold of some bad acid and spaced out in my mouth with a shotgun, but this is what I was working on at the time:

While this was a private function with its words not meant for general consumption, the age we live in is what historians may well call years from now “The Peek-a-boo-isticeine Era”, where nothing one wishes to remain clandestine or for one audience alone ever would. Be the recorder friend or foe, expect that your words and actions will be recorded somehow—especially on the campaign trail, as found out to the ultimate of dismay by former Virginia Senator George Allen via his infamous “Macaca” statement.

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What Obama said, is something that many wonks and think-tank babies have postulated for years. Senator Clinton herself used even more brusque language to describe that demographic in 1992. Obama's near-grievious mistake was those words issuing forth from an erudite, and yes—somewhat aloof and “edumacated” Black man's mouth. It was an inartful and clunky phrasing more suited to the hash-it-out style of an academic bull session than the three-word sloganeering that so dominates American politics these days. I got what he was saying there, as did I think a lot of Americans. It is not so much that those embittered among us merely “cling” to those issues of religion, safety (guns), and national security (immigration), but the point that has been made by progressives since the Age of Reagan is that the powers-that-be who are hell-bent on looking out for their own and no one else heavily push these “third rail” issues through the media in an attempt to throw chaff into the air of debate on the things that really affect Americans.. Never mind that you can't afford to see a doctor—how 'bout those gays a' smoohcin' and a' feelin' all over each other! Yes, yes...we know we facilitated your company's shipping your gig halfway 'round the world for 40% of the compensation, but hey, the real pisser is that people want to limit your ability to buy guns that'd blow a moose's head into so much Hamburger Helper™ with a trigger squeeze of 1.75 seconds releasing fifty rounds.

When people are drowning, they will grab at whatever is close by. And if after pushing them into the sea, you throw specific things of your choosing at them to float on—not something that would actually propel them anywhere—they will desperately grab at those things too. Flag-burning. Gay marriage. Willie Horton. Threat levels. Assault weapons bans. All pushed while savings and loans failed, Habeas Corpus was mauled beyond recognition, Bin Laden went unpunished, our privacy ceased to exist and so on, and so on , and scooby-dooby-doo. People are manipulated to where they think these are the issues placed before them are the true issues of the day—not the ones that actually impact them from day to day.

Faux outrage is the true “opiate of the masses”—and this government is its sleazy -ass pusher.

But yes....Obama stumbled with this. Most folks got exactly what he meant, but to the “three word slogan” crowd, he left enough ambiguity there to where he gave his opponents a loaded gun and begged them to blast him in the grille with it—Yosemite Sam-style. Obama has a lot of Adlai Stevenson in him,—a tendency to be very “thinky, sometimes overly-professorial, and yes, sometimes annoyingly analytical. To the point where for all of his soaring rhetoric and verbal élan in-speech, there is a bit of the “I'm going to let you see me figuring this shit out 'cause it's so cool to see my gears working.” when he's just plain talking.

My move out of that rundown was this: Taking into account the mathematical situation Sen. Clinton was in electorally against him, there really is no reason why she shouldn't have tried to maximize the damage ithose words could cause him. It was a desperate time, and regardless of what camp you come down in, strictly on the political maneuvering tip, when your opponent trips and falls into a hole, you toss in snakes, rocks and raw meat so tigers dive in too. We're all adults here and I think we get how the politics game is played. As correct as the statement was, Sen. Obama found himself amending it (as it was open to being easily twisted to a slam on a demographic group) and apologizing for any misconstruement.

Bluntly, he fucked up there, albeit a petit mal fuck-up when you get right down to it. In the ensuing days there were people on the street interviews with Americans in the affected areas who agreed with his statement. Be that as it may, it scanned to many as a huge “kick me” sign taped to his crotch. And kick people did, until Rev. Wright deigned to touch down in D.C., make goofy faces, and rail away as “the pastor scorned”.

Senator Clinton made hay of that too. Again, considering her electoral position, magnaminity was not something to be expected. My father had a saying that “Sometimes in life, there's an ass-whipping or two you just have to take”. “Wright Redux” was one such ass-whipping for Obama. And the media joined in gleefully with Sen. Clinton in the “jolly stomping” as the story and the language around it was vinyl-car-seat-in-the-noonday-sun hot. For two weeks she and the media grabbed Wright by the feet and beat Obama over the head with him like he was a lead pipe used in a gang-fight.

Again. I hold no rosy-eyed view of the media, nor do I expect a mathematically-cornered candidate to have done any less than she did. This ain't beanbag.

However, as far as the media goes, at least in terms of debates, I expect at the minimum, the barest modicum of fairness. In fact—fuck fair, as screwed up as they are, I'd almost accept “Fair-esque—If you like the smell of fairness, you'll love (whispered) Fair-esque!”

The Wright thing was a feeding frenzy, and that I can understand. The shitty, “Power Rangers”-level stunt work that George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson pulled at the pre-Pennsylvania debate was a whole other smoke—laced with PCP, donkey piss and battery acid I think. I would love to tell you that what they did lowered my opinion of ABC “News” but it couldn't have. I'd crossed them off my list of reputable broadcast outlets more than a year before over their handling of the wingnut pile-on of Amanda Marcotte/Melissa McEwan/John Edwards:

“Sooo...

A talking head for the network and news division that recently hired documented racist hatemonger Glenn Beck (google Glenn Beck and Media Matters) has the gall to feign moral outrage over a liberal blogger hired by the Edwards campaign's impassioned rants?

Even as said talking head's own brother, who runs a quiet, non-bomb tossing site called "Right Wing Nut House" (!) rails at the left in far worse terms? And has also taken this "story" up as a wingnut hobby horse along with the rest of the wingnutosphere?

Well...okay. I'd love to say hypocrisy like this is the reason I no longer watch ABC, (in spite of my actually being interested in getting into "Lost" this season, and watching "Grey's Anatomy" the last two seasons) but after "Path to 9-11", the entertainment-iaztion of "Nightline", and the general right-wing tilt of the Disney-owned network, the die was set.

And I don't miss it a bit. By all means Mr. Moran, enjoy your and your network's relegation to the "I used to watch you" dustbin.

Posted by: LowerManhattanite | Feb 7, 2007 1:53:55 PM

I wrote that on the ABC website TO Terry Moran and the network, and I fucking meant it. I still have the e-mail exchanges between Steve and myself from the year before where I was telling him how things had exploded at my then-job as we were dealing with ABC and their promotion of the revisionist, jingoistic “Path To 9-11”. There was an in-company revolt with e-mails flying back and forth between divisions to the point where I found myself forced to e-mail Steve outside of my job (because the goings on were so hot internally that outside communication of it being discovered would have cost people their jobs) to brief him on the contretemps. I walked away from ABC for good that day. That walk would be proven justified months later when I read about this:

This Week with George Stephanopoulos, May 13, 2007:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a very cool style when you're doing those town meetings where you're out on the campaign trail, and I wonder, how much of that is tied to your race?

SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: That's interesting.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: One of your friends told "The New Yorker" magazine that the mainstream is just not ready for a fire-breathing black man so do you turn down the temperature on purpose?

That's the idiot media we're cursed with.They have their special interests and ties to this and that and they do what they do. Which is why we often do what we do here and in other places in our blogroll to counterbalance all of that billion-dollar, pancaked and blow-dried stupid. All flag-pins, fancy salad greens, and fiery Reverends (of their selection, of course).

As I said downpage:

What's that old saying about “The devil you know vs. the devil you don't know”?

I know what I'm getting from the media. They play their stupid little games when the cycle gets light and gin up shit. They'll break a story down to smaller bits to create “new“ stories to fill the broadcast day and self-perpetuate their phony-baloney jobs. It's when people who should know better pick up on their slime-trail and try to sell it as spring water that I find myself wanting to scream.

And that leads us here...to something either so indescribably dumb, ridiculously ill thought-out, or worse—desperately venal— that...that I...I just have to shake my head in disbelief:

USA TODAY INTERVIEWER KATHY KELLY: How does Hillary Clinton win the nomination?


SENATOR CLINTON:Well Kathy, you know there was just an “AP” article posted that found how Senator Obama‘s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again. And how the, you know, whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me, and in independents I was running even with him and doing even better with Democratic leaning independents. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.

There's a pattern emerging here.”

The hothead in me wants to say “Yeah. You're right. That whole statement does indeed indicate an emerging pattern from you, ma'am.”

So, I'm gonna give Mr. Hothead a tumbler of Maker's Mark—neat—and have him chill for a few minutes as I look at this...statement.

Here is the deal. There is nothing wrong with discussing demographics and voting breakdowns. Both campaigns do so every damned day in their back rooms as they go over polling data. But when a reporter asks you “How can you win?”, and you start talking about demographics in terms of race, you'd better be Goddamned sure you can do so and finesse that language without coming off like either a.): a dog-whistling bigot, b.): an idiot just winging it off the cuff, or c.), the former and the latter combined.

Why, on God's green earth when asked the question “How can you win?”—asked ostensibly in the spirit of things looking dim and “What can you do to reverse that?”—would she start yammering about working, hard-working Americans, white Americans and whites in general shifting back to her?

There are so many awful tropes at play in that statement.

Is it a desperate call to, “come on home folks” to that group to save her candidacy?

Why the split off of “hard-working Americans” into their White sub-component?

Is that noting she has a “broader base” because of the support of “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans” another call-out to Black and Latin folks that when the rubber meets the road, your votes don't really count for much?

Never mind the seeming verbal exclusion of anybody other than Whites from the rubric of being “hard working”.

Senator Clinton's biggest downstate NY African American backer, Rep. Charles Rangel (who earlier this year called Obama “absolutely stupid” over his interpretation of Clinton camp statements about MLK and LBJ;s relationship) said the following:

But some of her supporters - including Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan)— slammed the comments.

“I can't believe Sen. Clinton would say anything that dumb,” Rangel told The News as he headed to the House floor, where earlier he had embraced Obama.

Yes Charlie. She did.

And there are so many reasons why she may have said it. Unfortunately...none of them are good ones.

Perhaps she misspoke. Or spoke inartfully. Or chose her words poorly. If so, this off-the-gorge gaffe makes Obama's “Bitter” statement look like a mere stumble.I want to believe it was a misstatement, but God, it's so damned specific, what with citing an AP article and all, and the odd, dissonant hammering of the racial paradigm that I don't know HOW that statement could ever be finessed in public discussion. Private? Closed-door talk—candidate to team? Okay.

But this ham-fisted kind of Bond-villain “I-shall-explain-my-plan-to-you-and-thus-expose-myself-to-destrcution-shortly-thereafter” pronouncement does her no good—in the short and the long run. You want to explain it away as a by-product of the fatigue of a long, brutal campaign? An effect of a strategic breakdown of command and control structures iin-campaign as key message personnel are now distracted with cutting their own financial deals that don't involve the candidate? Those are possibilities. But Melissa over at Shakesville deals with it thusly:

Now, I'm not particularly interested in discussing the veracity of the argument that white, working class voters' preference for Clinton makes her a stronger candidate—though, for whatever it's worth, I quite honestly believe that the vast majority of left-leaning voters are going to get behind whoever is the nominee, and the bigots who wouldn't support Obama solely because of his race are a wash with the bigots who wouldn't support Clinton solely because of her sex. That said, I know there are people who legitimately disagree, and fine, wev.

What I am keenly interested in is Clinton's having either intentionally or unintentionally equated "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans." Because, you know, on one hand, it's a cynical and ugly dog whistle to racists who equate brown-skinned people with laziness—and, on the other hand, it sounds exactly like a cynical and ugly dog whistle to racists who equate brown-skinned people with laziness. Even giving her the benefit of the doubt that she didn't intend to imply that non-white Americans aren't hard-working, the effect is the same.

And, since the best-case scenario is the one generally used to avoid apologies, I'm going with that only to show why she still needs to apologize, anyway.

An apology is in order as this was indeed a fuck-up, whether a simple marble-mouthed, accidental verbal gaffe (kind of unlikely) or a sleep deprivation-fueled “I-thought-I was-using-my-inside-voice” screw-up. Sadly, I doubt one is forthcoming. It's late in the game and when teams are down or feeling frustrated, “flagrant fouls” are likely to occur. Sorry doesn't get said at that point in the game. It's an outgrowth of the situation at hand. It may not have been intended to injure, but you've already clotheslined the mother-fucker and sent the message to the other side, and the whole arena—those who haven't headed for the exits—know the game's situation. And I can only pray that this wasn't an intentional play to super-spike the numbers in the decidedly less-progressive West Virginia and Kentucky where she'll probably win big, just to score some “Bubba vote”-credited “garbage time” points. To cynically goose the margins to the point where she can point and claim “See! I am popular!” Leave us not venture there, please? That isn't a discussion of demographics—that's an appeal to the “Deliverance” crowd.

I mean, It's been evident for quite some time that there's a level of upset in the Clinton camp over the seeming abandonment of them by a once-faithful African American voting public. It was as late as December when pundits across America were wondering whether Obama was “Black enough” and how he'd have difficulty in poaching much of the Black vote from Clinton. And when it happened, it seemed to catch them both—the senator and the former president woefully off guard. There has been a palpable frustration in them over that new reality—and voiced loudest by her most prominent surrogate, her husband Bill. The statements spoke for themselves. And that loss of a key voting bloc identified for years with them had to hurt. We all know that. And when someone you've counted on for-ever stops “picking up the phone”, you look elsewhere for help. And maybe...just maybe you throw a dig at the abandoner to make yourself feel a a little better. You play up your replacement suitor to stem your feeling of betrayal—Hey, he/she/they want me—and to appear to the world as still being desired.

That's human nature. But it comes with a cost.

Whatever short-run gain it achieves with the “new” paramour, once word gets back to the old one, especially if the two of you still have to deal down the road...you will have a problem. Last night I went out to a meeting at a coffee spot in Brooklyn and stumbled into an open mic night. There was no “quiet policy” and people still chattered as the various poets and troubadours did their thing. I overheard a verrrrry animated conversation between four Black women ranging in age from their early thirties to mid fifties.

Having moved from talk of a project they were all working on, they lapsed into discussing Senator Clinton's statement on “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans”.

They were merciless.

There were lots of “Can you believes?...”, “Oh no, she knew exactly what she was sayings”, and worst of all “I will remember THAT shit come her next election days” bandied about.

This...is Senator Clinton's home state for the U.S. Senate where this heated discussion was going on. Now, throw that in with Rangel's angry response, and the feeling—founded or unfounded—that she has been a bit too liberal with the shiv in dealing with Sen. Obama and you have a to say the least, very disillusioned portion of a voting bloc she will desperately need for Senate re-election. It's kind of a “Black New York: Drop Dead!” kind of thing. And don't think for a second that when her Senate re-election time comes around that some enterprising opponent—either a lefty-leaning Dem upstart, or a wrench-in-the-works GOP'er won't trot those words out against her again and again and again.

Black folks in NYC are not happy with her right about now. This shit? Ain't helping out with it.

These are the wages...of bitterness.

And bitterness is an ugly thing indeed. It twists you. It curdles your soul and hardens your heart. It deadens the eyes and rots your relationships. It will drive you to say and do things that a clear-minded person wouldn't dare. Senator Obama's statement about what bitterness brings echoes like a brick ricocheting down an elevator shaft. People will cling to polarizing things as a way to express their frustrations.

I don't like the way this primary season is ending, in spite of my long-held, heartfelt desire for the damned thing to be over. There are things happening here—ugly, unseemly things that'll have a shelf life far beyond this mere blip in time. Class splits unearthed. News agencies exposed and de-legitimized. Reputation-damaging gaffes and cynical plays to people that lower you. Ugh. As a student of history and politics, I forget very little of what I've learned over the years, and I'm already wishing I could forget some of the things I've seen this year. But sadly, I won't.

I guess I'm a little bitter too. Maybe we all are. And a little broken-hearted to boot.

It was a couple of weekends ago when I was at the peak of my dental suffering when the blogospheric story broke about Senator Clinton's meeting with fundraisers where she was imploring their deep-pocketed help. This was never meant to be heard publicly (I think) but when it got out I was very, very down about it. I wasn't alone. From Jane at FireDogLake:

The Huffington Post has Hillary Clinton on tape disparaging Barack Obama and his support from MoveOn, saying that the organization "didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan.”

I've tried to stay out of the pie fights of late, but as a long-term defender of MoveOn and other progressive organizations -- this is completely unacceptable.

"MoveOn opposed military action in Afghanistan" is a Republican talking point, articulated specifically and purposefully by Karl Rove:

Rove went on to say that conservatives wanted to "unleash the might and power" of the military against the Taliban in Afghanistan, while liberals wanted to submit petitions. He cited a petition he said was backed by MoveOn.org that called for "moderation and restraint" in responding to the attacks.

And via The Huffington Post:

At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the "activist base" of the Democratic Party -- and MoveOn.org in particular -- for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had "flooded" state caucuses and "intimidated" her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post.

------------------------------------------

“Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama]—which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down,” Clinton said to a meeting of donors. “We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with.”

Jane was very hurt by that, namely seeing the senator use a Rovian lie—an actual Rovian lie—as a stalking horse for grubbing campaign dough. And In spite of my pain, I was too when I read it.

Yet, I wanted to understand. Give the benefit of the doubt because not doing so would've sent me deeper into despair. Sen. Clinton's being angry about MoveOn's “endorsement” I could understand somewhat. Even her holding a grudge against them. It was in many ways yet another abandonment.

That's human nature again—especially when one considers the irony of how MoveOn came to be.

The group was originally called “Censure and Move On”—founded as a bulwark against the evils of Ken Starr's vendetta against Bill Clinton.

What was the knife in my gut was her slandering a progressive FORCE with a straight-out-of-Karl-Rove's-mouth lie. Her bitter, (yes, bitter) “how could they”-ish line about MoveOn “not supporting Afghan intervention” was a lie that Rove himself has repeatedly used to pillory the group. His quote in the blockquote a little ways up verfies that.

And the salt water on that knife to the gut was her trotting that shpiel out to fat cats at the fund-raiser as some sort of “I'm not with them!” bona fides. It got me to wondering in one of my more lucid moments, “just who those financiers were and WHY SUCH A ROVIAN SENTIMENT WOULD BE FIGURED TO RESONATE WITH THEM.” I didn't want to be lucid after thinking on that for too long. So I popped a vicodin and went off to the land of nod, where anger and bitterness could not find me. But before I did, I remembered something that FDL's Jane, who has been decidedly, refreshingly fair about the whole primary season said last fall to Elizabeth Edwards:

“So here’s the rule. You never repeat right wing talking points to attack your own, ever. You never enter that echo chamber as a participant. Ever. You never give them a hammer to beat the left with. Just. Don’t. Do. It.”

I remember thinking on her “Just. Don't. Do. It.” as sleep enveloped me.

And when I awoke, I was angry again. And yes...bitter. That event was pretty much the nadir for me. All that has come since is just after-the-coma cock-punches. Wright Redux. Hard-workin' Whites. Sillyfuck debates.

There is no joy in Mudville.

Maybe soon. But right now? As Phase One of “Campaign '08” draws to an end? No. I see it a bit here, but even moreso at other stops I used to love frequenting around blogtopia. There is rancor. There is angriness. And smoldering semi-loads of just-dumped / mixed-in-with-old-mountains of bitterness. A teeming, ever-growing landfill of bitterness.

It needs to stop. But how?

Well, whenever I'm feeling a bit down, I've found that music tends to help me through, and one of this blog's longtime regulars—DocBopper e-mails me regularly with this message in every missive's footer:

“The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing”---James Brown

The man's got a point. I ain't talkin' 'bout a tired-ass “kum-ba-ya” circle of Cowsills-like blended tenors, sopranos and baritones swaying choirfully...I mean an ass-shaking, soulful on-the-two-and-four get down. For release. To get back “on the beat”, if you will, as we gear up for “Phase Two”. As “The Godfatrher” himself said:

People, people
We got to get over
Before we go under...

Hey, country
Didn't say what you meant
Just changed
Brand new funky President.

Who sure as hell ain't the bearings-challenged John McCain.



Dance it out, ya'll.

There's more...

Dear Paul Begala and Chris Matthews...

Thank you.

Thank you for your clarity.

Your unvarnished truthfulness.

Your bigotry-spawned “going to ground” over what this election is truly about for yourselves and I'm guessing the majority of your co-horts in the nattering chattering class.

I thank you gentlemen for at the very least, exposing yourselves for what you are and letting the world and me know just what the twisted, fear-crafted movement inside you is that makes you tick-tick-tick.

You sirs, and your fellow travelers have removed all doubt for me. At last I know where I stand with you—or rather, five steps behind you .

From Chris Matthews last month:

MATTHEWS: Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri is an Obama supporter. Senator McCaskill, did you advise Obama to go out and try to bowl the other day?

McCASKILL: Well, listen, I grew up in a small town where you learned to do two things: You learned to bowl and you learned to roller-skate. I can’t wait to challenge him to a game of bowling.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let me ask you about how he — how’s he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?

And this from the revelatory Paul Begala during the heat of last last night's rollercoaster primary coverage:

BEGALA: When people say things — I love Donna and we go back 22 years. We’ve never been on different sides of an arguments in our entire lives. But if her point is that there’s a new Democratic Party that somehow doesn’t need or want white working-class people and Latinos, well count me out.

DONNA BRAZILE, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Paul, baby, I did not say that.

BEGALA: We cannot win with egg heads. Let me finish my point. We cannot win with egg heads and African-Americans. OK, that is the Dukakis Coalition, which carried ten states and gave us four years of the first George Bush.

President Clinton — reached across to get a whole lot of Republicans and Independents to come. I think Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both have that capacity. They both have a unique ability—well it’s not unique if they both have it. They both have a remarkable ability to reach out to those working-class white folks and Latinos. Senator Clinton has proven it; Barack has not yet, but he can. And I certainly hope he is not shutting the door on expanding the party.

(CAMPBELL) BROWN: OK. Let — egg heads and African-Americans? That’s the new coalition?

BRAZILE: First of all, Paul, you didn’t hear me right. Maybe I should come and cook you something because you’ve got a little hearing problem. I was one of the first Democrats who were going to the white working-class neighborhoods, encouraging white Democrats not to forget their roots. I have drank more beers with “Joe Six Pack,” “Jane Six
Pack” and everybody else than most white Democrats that you’re talking about.

In terms of Hispanics, you know Paul, I know the math. I know Colorado; I know Nevada; I know New Mexico. So that’s not the issue. I’m saying that we need to not divide and polarize the Democratic Party as if the Democratic Party will rely simply on white, blue collar male—you insult every black blue collar Democrat by saying that. So stop the divisions. Stop trying to split us into these groups, Paul, because you and I know both know we have been in more campaigns. We know how Democrats win and to simply suggest that Hillary’s coalition is better than Obama’s, Obama’s is better than Hillary’s — no. We have a big party, Paul.

BEGALA: That’s right.

BRAZILE: Just don’t divide me and tell me I cannot stand in Hillary’s camp because I’m black, and I can’t stand in Obama’s camp because I’m female. Because I’m both.

There is nothing that warms my African American heart more than being told that I am not a “regular person”—whatever that is, or that my vote is some sort of statistical anomaly, or simply having my vote flat-out discounted.

Hey, let me show you a picture.



It's a bit blurry and you've probably never seen it before, but here are some details on it. It was captured on film on June 12, 1963—the year I was born. What does it show? A two-tone '57 Chevy Sedan parked in a Jackson, Mississippi home's carport. There's a stain on the ground trailing away from the driver's side and ending in a pool at the far left. I grabbed this from a video chronicling that night.

Let's look at it a little closer, shall we?



I've highlighted that “pool” area so you can understand what it is.

That's blood.

Starting in a thin stream and then gouting from a gaping wound in a man's back courtesy of a Ernfield 1917 30.06 rifle bullet. Said man dragged himself about 25 feet from where he was struck initially and then collapsed near his front door where that pool collected.

That man's name was Medgar Wiley Evers. And he was assassinated for fighting for civil rights and most importantly near the time of his murder, voting rights for African Americans.

Yes. People put their lives on the line and sometimes—too many times—saw their lives snuffed out for fighting to obtain and maintain that right. So, when I hear the likes of a Matthews and revealingly, a Begala flushing the votes of nearly 14 million African Americans down the crapper because they don't like where those votes are being cast and for whom, I think of Medgar Evers on that night, getting out of his car, taking custom-made T-shirts reading “Jim Crow Must Go!” out of the back seat, and then a cowardly sniper's bullet ripping through his back and him bleeding out on his front steps as his wife and kids opened the door to see him there, life ebbing away with every millisecond.

Guess what? Medgar Evers was “regular people”. We are regular people. And these weak-assed attempts to chump off the Black vote when it doesn't play to conventional wisdom or fit a desired template pisses on the memory of those who fought the hardest and sacrificed the most for it. We make up 13.5% of the electorate. You court us when you need votes for “X”, then diss us when we vote for “Y” and “Y” ain't what you're down with.

“Regular people.” “African Americans and Eggheads.”

Let me ask a simple question here. If Black folk only make up 13.5% of Americans, and college educated folks make up 29% (allowing for overlap between the two groups, as well as overlap between college educated voters and GOP-inclined ones), where in the name of Dr. George Washington Carver is the rest of this nettlesome, apple-cart upsetting vote coming from? Or has the dreaded Black Genius Camp and the MIT-educated numerical wizards from the movie “21” banded together in cahoots to unfairly freaknomic-ize this year's primary results? Trotting out this patently racist sour grapes bullshit would be maddening if it weren't so sad and revealing about the people perpetrating it.

And whether you're a hard-core member of “Obamanation” or a pom-pom waving “Clintonista”, common sense should prevail and allow anyone with eyes to do the simple math and realize how specious, divisive and destructive this framing is.

The numbers don't support it. Silly people's fears and naked spite do.

““Regular People” are turning out in record numbers this year just in the primaries not as some statistical blip. It's clear that something is up in America. Gas down the block from me is $3. 91 a gallon for Regular. They're tacking foreclosure notices to houses like they were cellophaned copies of “Pennysavers”. This asinine war has infuriated people beyond belief and trust in the way “things have been” has eroded mightily. Habeas Corpus is under siege, and a government that promised to be hands-off has been revealed to be totally “hands-in”, as in up our asses judicially via manipulation of US attorneys and privacy-wise in terms of FISA. These seven and a half years of Bushian presdiential awfulness is what's driving things change-wise.

But you don't want to look at that.

That's too big a thought for your walnut-sized, political bronto-brains to digest. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's the “elites” who have fucked this thing for you. “The Creative Class”. Eggheads. And of course, the n*ggers.

I'm one of seven kids, born to North Carolinians with a family tree going back to and fading out at Pre-Emancipation. I'm also a writer, actor and visual artist as well as a former college boy. I suppose that makes me the magic and dreaded electoral trifecta of evil according to these two clowns and their co-conspirators in piss-pot punditry.

And apparently, I don't fucking count. Me, the great-great -great grandchild of slaves. People who built this country under a whip of leather and second-class citizenship. My vote and the votes of people like me don't matter a whit. A vote Medgar Evers took a bullet in the back for. Whose vote counts? Ones from the likes of those who shot him down for daring to assert personhood for 13.5 million Black folks. And if not them, then those who quietly have no problem with his murder and what it represented.

“Regular people” “Real America” The mother-fucking “Heartland”.

Thank you Paul Begala. And thank you Chris Matthews. For coming clean on how you really feel. I'm no sage, and while I may not know exactly what America herself is or is not ready for, I know what you two and your ilk are clearly not ready for. You've spent your adult public lives playing at high-mindedness, but now...you've come clean.

The mask is off and I see you for what you are. What's that old saying about “The devil you know vs. the devil you don't know”?

I know you now. Benefit of the doubt shielded you before. But no more.

“Desperation is the flashing, trembling hand that snatches away the veil of false propriety.”

Who said that?

Why, I just did.

Just your typical, discounted, influential-beyond-my-wildest-dreams, and might I say, educated Black person.

At last, I know where I stand.

And because of that, I will fight that much harder. Against injustice. Against a corrupt and twisted system. And yes, against you. Because you see, as well as knowing where I stand...I also know, and will never forget...



...where Medgar lay.

There's more...

Pain

"Open Mouth Buddha, shedding Black Tears" Click for LARGE.
2007, Gallery #19, # 6915 - Kazuya Akimoto Art Museum.

Kyle and I were cleaning my room tonight. Hurt my back.

Nothing serious, but damn it hurts when it hurts.

In my head, I'm 30. *sighs* My body just doesn't play along. Grrrr.

Good news is, my bed is now clean. It had 20+ books, and a stack of magazines piled high. Now my bed's made neatly. I could stretch out before; now I can stretch way out.

I owe three people/magazine/journals, articles or notes on stuff they're writing. Plus I'm way behind in posting here at GNB. I've been sick (in pain or actually ill) off and on the last two months. Mostly pain stuff, which my medical team and I are trying to get a grip on. It lays me up for days and days at a time; I've pretty much given up explaining what's going on to anyone but my inner circle.

This month, I've been taking Opana on a trial basis -- in addition to my regular pain meds. While the pain control has been good, Opana's side effects haven't been good at all. The good news is, just as in when you're making a change in any operating system, you make ONE change at a time. I've been very stable in my, i.e.: the baseline which is "Jesse", for a while now. Unlike say, several years ago, or worse, back in 2001-2002 when I had just had the neurosurgery and was completely in the fog. So when the Opana threw me off a bit, in some very specific ways, I was able to sort out what was going on, fairly quickly and report.

After meeting with a key member of my medical team today (er, yesterday -- Monday) we've put the med on my allergic/contraindicated list:

• Neurontin (gabapentin)
• Effexor (venlafaxine hydrocholride)
• Celexa (citalopram)
• Lyrica (pregabalin)
• Opana (oxymorphone HCI)

All five of these meds were either directly to treat pain, or for helping my nerve's electrical system work better. In some cases, both. FAIL.

It took years to work out the medications I'm on now. YEARS. And when pain happens which isn't controlled -- as I currently have in my right hip (from the car accident) which impacts my ability to walk (from an old ski injury on my left knee) -- it takes a while to figure out precisely how to control the pain. It's vastly more important to get it right, than to throw any damn thing up there.

Why?

Because these chemicals impact your brain. They change who "you" are. Literally, too much, too little, the wrong dose, the wrong med, and "you" go away. Who is there? Not you, sucker.

Maybe a younger version of you (an emotional teenager or twenty year old) with the memories you have? Maybe a paranoid, someone who is violent or repressed, asexual or very sexual, scared or angry, dominating or with almost no emotions...

Pouring brain-altering medicines directly into the bloodstream, fracks with who you are, right now. And "you" won't know it unless you and your entire medical team:

• has a long base-line on who "you" are,
• is actively looking for changes,
• is super-competent to detect changes,
  
• you have a support structure at home, work, and with your medical team prepared to work with you as the medicine is adjusted till it works properly, and is unafraid of changes in "you", and
• confident in their and your ability to return you to baseline.
  

Once, shortly after someone learned that I take pain meds, this asshole (who I was fighting with at the time) talked about my health in one of her/his comments to me, saying in effect, "I just don't trust your judgment anymore. Maybe your meds are off?" It wasn't a friend doing me a favor; it was a fuck-you. I blew that person off forever. Done.

Chronic pain patients; chronic patients of all kinds, do what we can do, when we can do it. The adjustments take however long they take. I write what I can, when I can. Pain is there till my Team and I figure out a way to make it go away, without taking "me" with it (or regressing or losing "me" in the process.) I am one of the key parts of all of this. Only my children, I, and a few key members of my medical team, can tell my Team as a whole, if "I" am still there. Which means sometimes, I have to trust, for example, Kyle's judgment or my therapist's judgment, over my own. Even when I am certain about something, if they say otherwise, under certain circumstances (like after certain med changes), we go with their assessment as to who I'm being, over mine.

I never lose sight of how fortunate I am. I have medical insurance. Good medical insurance. It pay co-pays at Tiers 1, 2 & 3. Even though I have to pay over $200 a month in prescription co-pays, I can handle that. This new tier 4 & 5 pricing as talked about today in The New York Times would make it impossible for me and others so situated to survive my kind of pain. Self-medication (a slow suicide) is the traditional option... booze and street-drugs. These not only cost too much -- thousands of dollars a month -- but they work poorly, as well as causing massive damage to one's body. In many cases they are illegal.

I have friends who were hooked on horse for years. Decades in one case. Decent pain medications are a recent deal. And you need money; the poor and working class don't get the good shit. They get booze and street drugs, as our fathers and grand-parents did after their wars. Want the good stuff? You'd better be middle to upper-class, or owning class. Then you can have decent drugs, legal drugs, and not worry about getting busted, keep your job, and be able to afford everything through your health plan.

Did I say drugs? I meant, medicine.

Enough. Time to sleep on my big clean bed, let the pain flush away.

There's more...

You're Not Imagining Things: Life Was Fairer 30 Years Ago

graph AFL-CIO NowBlog

The Class War: Playing The Middle Against The Poor
To Make The Wealthy Enormously MEGA-Wealthy
...'Cause Everyone Hopes To Be Rich Someday.

Suckers.

People are being had.

We're talked (and will keep talking about Racism.)

We're going to start talking of Class -- economic power, and how it divides us in favor of The Man.

There will be more posts on Classism. We'll be speaking more about what we mean, doing posts on specific points, breaking down and setting up an entire world of distinctions. It's going to take a while. Months, half a year.

Don't sweat it. The Man's been using this system ever since The Man's been around. It ain't going no where. You're not late to the party.

Here is some suggestions I've heard used. Don't get attached to these words yet, till I confirm them solid:

• Capitalist Class - Top 20%
• Ruling Class - 60-80%
• Middle Class - 40-60%
• Working Class - 20-40%
• Under Class - Bottom 20%

In any event, don't confuse the words of a distinction, with the distinction itself. The map is not the territory.

For example, when we promise something, it's a commitment between two parties to do x by time y with conditions of satisfaction z given the following background of obviousness. It isn't necessary to say, "I promise, I vow, I swear, I commit, I give my word, Yeah sure okay, I'll do it, You can count on me, No problem, I'll get it done, See you tomorrow, Pick you up at 8, It's a deal, Shake on it," and so on and so on. Sometimes just a nod of the head, or even bringing over the Cup of Coffee, is enough to indicate you not only made a promise, you're fulfilling it right now. The words are not the distinction.

What matters here is grasping the Distinctions of Economic Power being pointed to in these five proposed categories:

• Capitalist Class - Top 20%
• Ruling Class - 60-80%
• Middle Class - 40-60%
• Working Class - 20-40%
• Under Class - Bottom 20%

Remember please that almost everyone -- (this is part of the problem):

• Overestimates the Class they are in.
• Hopes to move into the next Class "RealSoonSomeDaySoon",
• Is statistically unlikely to change more than half to one class in a generation.
• The lower one's class, the harder it is to move up.
• Opposes restrictions on higher Classes due to false identification with and hope of attaining higher classes.
• The two highest classes through economic control of the political system AND religious systems, systematically set factions of the lower classes against each other in methaporical and actual wars, while taking real financial profits.

Welcome to the Group News Blog Classism College.
I believe Classism is critical to speak of. As critical as women's rights was and as racism was and remains today. As GLBT rights is. Classism's time is now.

Along with my regular posts, I'll be spending time posting about Classism, both with posts pointing it out, and with posts breaking down and laying out key distinctions, and the distinctions on which those distinctions rest, and the ones on which they rest as well. Some of which will require some real study to work through. "Classism College."

If the world rests on the back of a giant turtle, you'd want to know, what the turtle stood on, right? As the the old woman said to the noted scientist at the lecture when he asked her that question, "Oh you can't fool me Young Man. It's turtles all the way down."

We're going to really get into the core of the distinctions. It will take months. Not as if it will suddenly take over GNB or anything. Just know when you start seeing discussions of Class on GNB, it's by design. There's a conversation going on here.

Sara -- feel free to come right on to this post and mark it up if you want, including correcting nomenclature. Or you know, write your own posts. Guys -- you're welcome to post directly, fix, mark this up directly as you wish. I'm just working it out on the fly.

Maggie -- please put corrections on nomenclature and percentages in comments.

Everyone -- please read The Underclass.
(Any quoting I do it would be inadequate. I read the whole damn thing to Kyle last night. Blew her away. My 17 year-old kid -- falling asleep -- was as excited as I've seen her in a long time about a political idea which didn't obviously directly hit her interests. Class, when communicated clearly, clearly strikes at ALL our interests. "The Underclass" is a GREAT article.)

Study the graph up top:

In adding hard data to Lardner’s impressionistic observations, The Wall Street Journal reports that “the richest Americans’ share of national income has hit a postwar record, surpassing the highs reached in the 1990s bull market, and underlining the divergence of economic fortunes blamed for fueling anxiety among American workers.”

The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19 percent in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8 percent set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks.

The Journal’s conclusion, based on an analysis of tax data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), is the latest in a growing body of information pointing to the widening gap between the Two Americas and an increasing public awareness that something more than a cyclical economic “adjustment” is wrong with this nation’s economy. Earlier this week, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which sponsored the panel, issued a report with the Center for Social Policy that finds low wages, inadequate benefits, and limited work supports leave one-in-five people (nearly 41 million) in working families struggling to make ends meet.

“Bridging the Gaps: A Picture of How Work Supports Work in Ten States” confirms what the union movement has been asserting for some time: Many workers are in jobs that do not provide health insurance or enough earnings to cover basic expenditures. At the same time, these workers earn too much to qualify for work supports such as Medicaid and Food Stamps. (The Economic Policy Institute held a panel discussion last week on how work supports, properly funded and run, can bridge the gap for the working poor. More here.)

In fact, since 1973 the incomes of the top 0.1 percent—families earning $1.3 million a year—increased 353 percent. More than half of all economic growth since 1979 has gone to the richest 10 percent of America’s families, most of it to the top 1 percent. This data is part of the AFL-CIO’s “An Economy That Works for All” campaign, in which we are holding trainings with union members across the nation where it becomes clear that while we once grew together as a nation, today we are growing apart—economically, socially and politically. The goal of these trainings is to mobilize activists to take action and reverse this slide into Rich-Poor nationhood.

CEPR Economist Heather Boushey, co-author of the study, also spoke at the panel here last week, where she offered even more confirmation of the Two Americas. Boushey notes the corporate tax burden of top earners has declined by two-thirds since 1962, even as most of us are working an average 13.3 weeks more per year compared with the previous generation. Yet, as the CEPR study shows, these longer hours aren’t benefiting millions of working people.

Boushey also points out why most of us feel a disconnect between claims that we are living in a sound economy and our own paycheck-to-paycheck reality. When mainstream media describes the economy, two contradictory points are made: How rich we are as a nation and how we as a nation are unable to afford a robust safety net.

Reconciling these two themes, says Boushey, is the fact that the nation’s growing economic benefits have been funneled to a small group of the already wealthy, depleting the nation’s tax base and effectively defunding programs such as those that would make a difference for the working poor. When we hear the government can’t “afford” such programs, Boushey says, what that translates to is:

Let the wealthy take a bigger piece of the pie while telling the rest of us that’s the way it is.

Some Republicans in Congress scream “socialism” when fighting to prevent passage of children’s health insurance, but when it comes to tax cut handouts, they not only are first in line, they ensure Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy pass every time. Not only are Bush’s tax breaks (passed multiple times since 2001) heavily skewed toward the very wealthiest few, according to Citizens for Tax Justice:

Because the tax cuts are being paid for with borrowed money, the cost of paying the added national debt more than wipes out any benefits from the tax cuts for 99 percent of residents in each state. Only the best-off one percent are net winners from the president’s fiscal policies.

The struggles we’re facing aren’t a temporary blip in the economic cycle. Since 1973, the growth of family incomes has been much slower, even as the incomes of the richest 20 percent of families have risen much faster. As the percentage of workers in unions declined during this period, their power and the ability to protect their living standards also diminished.

As Jason Furman, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and an adviser to Democratic politicians, said in today’s Wall Street Journal:

We’ve had a 30-year trend of increasing inequality. There was an artificial reduction in that trend following the bursting of the stock-market bubble in 2000.

Understanding that the widening income gap in this nation is not a passing phase is the first step. Electing those to office in 2007 and 2008 who also understand this is the next.

"It's not about the economy, stupid", to mis-quote the Big Dog's famous 1992 campaign line.

It is about mis-identifying your place in the American Dream, and coming to grips with how your life has been being used by the forces of Class, and you didn't really grasp how deeply.

Yeah, I know some of you, the radicalized ones, the arrogant ones, you think you know this. Some of you may. I thought I did. Wrong.

Please be open to the possibility that where we're going to take you for on this ride, has something new to teach you, new distinctions, new oppotrunites for learning. Which implies of course, that you don't know all the answers, and even that some of what you do know to be the truth, ain't. That possibly, you may have been had, in a major, major way, including in places and domains you didn't, don't, see/saw coming.

The committment I'm making, what I'm attempting to do with GNB Classism College, is by the time we're done -- and it's going to take months and months, perhaps even a year; I don't know how long it will be, but it's going to take a long time, let's just say that for now -- is reveal levels of how we've all been used by Classism and the unseen unexamined distinctions within which it operates, the distinguishing of which will knock you, our regular GNB reader, for a loop. *smiles*
Becoming a competent observer of your life through a rich set of distinctions around economics, power, money, trust, force (state violence), history, biology, language, mood, and other core distinctions of Class, in a way you have not here-to-for lived life day-to-day distinguishing, will leave you operating in life able to make choices you've never been able to make.

Choices are also power.

Classism is about control of power.

There's more...